


Five Children's Series the Rockford Kids were Never In

by orphan_account



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Baby sitting, Body Swap, Bunnies, Gen, Photographic Memory, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 07:30:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/648100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ahhhhh, nostalgia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Children's Series the Rockford Kids were Never In

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to chibirhm who betaed this and then betaed it again when I whined at her, H., who let me quiz her about the Field Museum, and duchessofavalon, who sent me [this picture](https://twitter.com/NHLBlackhawks/status/291759755989512192/photo/1) which started the whole thing.

"I'm just saying he doesn't have a lot of experience," Bollig says with a shrug.

"He has like a million little brothers and sisters," Andrew argues. "And they're nightmares, ask Hayesy."

"One of the twins got peanut butter all over the couch and the other stuck a lego up her nose." Hayesy shifts in the arm chair. He's had another growth spurt and he's a bit too big for it now. "Brandon got it out before I had to call their parents or the emergency room though."

"Well if _Brandon's_ sibilings--" Bollig begins and it clicks for Andrew.

"Oh my god, you're being pissy over his name, aren't you?" Bollig gets hung up on the weirdest things sometimes, it drives Andrew up the wall.

"Shut up mutt, we just got our customers back from the Erie club and I don't want people to start thinking that they're the better option again." Brandon's started growing a beard and it makes him look older, like he's a college student instead of in high school. 

"I'll wrestle you over it," Andrew offers, already taking off his watch.

"This isn't actually a good way to decide things," Krugs says, shaking his head. "In Sweden we would have a fish slapping contest over it."

"Stop making Swedish shit up, we've all seen Monty Python," Leddy says. Leddy's still a bit sensitive about the fact he believed Kruger when he said that there were giant polar bears in Northern Sweden and also that he couldn't eat broccoli because it went against his culture. The polar bear thing had gone on for months too. 

"No biting," Bollig says, toeing off his shoes. Leddy and Krugs have already started moving furniture so there's a clear space in the middle of the room. 

"No promises," Andrew replies and then lunges, wrapping his arms around Bollig's waist and taking him down to the floor.

Five minutes later they're lying sprawled on top of each other, forced to quit after Andrew's mom had shouted for them to "Knock it off you two, I don't want to take Andy to the hospital for stitches again!"

"What if we call him Saader?" Andrew offers, wincing when he bends his arm. His elbow banged against the floor when Bollig had rolled him over, and it's definitely go to bruise.

"Call him Saader and he's only going to be a junior member, until he graduates middle school," Bollig says, inspecting the rug burn on his knee.

"Sounds good to me," Hayesy says briskly, going over and opening the door. Brandon--Saader--is sitting on the floor opposite of the doorway, fiddling with his cellphone.

"Hey Saader, get in here, we need your number to add to the flyers," Hayesy says, as Krugs opens his laptop to start taking minutes.

"Welcome to the Baby-sitters Club, kid," Bollig says, and Andrew smirks, because yeah, he knew this was going to work out. 

**1) The Baby-sitters Club**

Leddy is trying very hard not to look at Kruger’s sisters, well Kruger’s, well, they’re really his sister’s but are Kruger’s temporarily, but the point is, he’s trying very hard not to look at the breasts currently on Skype. Which is difficult, because Kruger’s got the laptop tilted at a weird angle and he’s got his/his sister’s arms crossed over his/his sister’s chest is a way that looks like he’s trying to hide them, only it’s just making it way more obvious.

Kruger’s sister snaps something in Swedish, and even though it’s Kruger’s voice, it doesn’t sound like him at all. Kruger tends to speak softly in English, and unlike Stals, Hammer, and Oduya, his accent rounds the ends of his words and his “th”s sound more like “d”s. Leddy’s always liked it because it’s like an over exaggerated Minnesota accent and it makes him think of home. Kruger’s sister has apparently been living in England for the last five years, and while she’s got an accent it sounds more British to Leddy than anything else. 

“Excuse me,” she says, after Kruger huffs and then recrosses his arms in a way that means Leddy has to look at the ceiling for a bit. “Do you mind if I use your loo?” 

Kruger looks horrified. “No! No, going to the bathroom!” 

“I have to pee, and unless you want to wet your pants, I am going to the loo.” 

“Sure, go right ahead,” Hayes tells her over Kruger saying that she would be wetting _her_ pants, he is not responsible for any pants wetting. 

“Thank you,” she says, walking past Shaw and Bollig who smile at her politely from the hotel bed. 

Bollig waits until she’s closed the door before saying quietly, “So this is weird.” 

“You’re telling me,” Saad says from the floor, where he’s been dozing on and off for the past hour. 

“And she just woke up like this?” Leddy asks again, since as Kruger’s roommate Saad was the first one to find out. 

“Kept me up for three hours tossing and turning and then all of the sudden he...she...bolted upright and told me that she was going to call the police,” Saad repeated. Apparently Kruger’s sister had been pretty unnerved waking in a strange hotel room with a man she didn’t know. Leddy can’t really blame her. 

Their shouting had woken up Leddy and Hayes and Bollig and Shaw who were rooming on either side of them, but fortunately not the rest of the team. After they finally figured out what had happened (there was a confusing half an hour in there) they got Kruger on the phone, and then on Skype. 

“I went to sleep like normal,” Kruger says miserably from the computer. 

“Don’t worry buddy,” Bollig says, “we’ll get this figured out and you back in no time.” 

There’s a flushing noise and Kruger’s sister comes back into the room. “Do you all have horrible bruises like my brother?” she asks curiously, poking at her...his...her? rib. 

“Fuck,” Hayes says with growing horror. “We’ve got a game tomorrow night.” 

“Well fuck,” Leddy is forced to agree.

 **2) Help I’m trapped in...**

“It’s creepy in here at night,” Marcus says to Nick as they both look up at the apatosaurus. 

Snapshot is over by the triceratops, clicking away to himself as he stores away photographic memories to compare to his memories from earlier that same day. 

“Super creepy,” Brandon says, coming to stand next to them. The apatosaurus looms above them and there’s a group of archaeopteryx hanging on the other end of the hall. Even at night the lights of Chicago come in through the windows on the side of the room and cast skeleton shadows on the floor. 

Andrew and Brandon are standing watch at the entrances. To Marcus this mostly seems like shifting around and peering into the shadows but Snapshot had insisted that if they were going to stay in the museum after hours to figure out why the bone went missing, they needed to stay alert for any suspicious activity. Marcus is a little worried that after the triceratops leg bone disappeared and then quickly reappeared there would be more security around, but they haven’t been caught yet. 

“At least you can see the dinosaurs now,” Jimmy says, nudging him. “I know you were having trouble with everyone around earlier.”

“We looked at every single dinosaur,” Marcus tells him. “And we counted the ribs on the stegosaurus.” 

“Cool,” Jimmy says, as they walk towards where Snapshot has climbed over the ropes and is peering at the triceratops tail going “click, click, click”. “Hey, do you know why museums have old dinosaur bones?”

Marcus looks at Nick and Nick shrugs back. Jimmy wants to grow up to be a comedian so he reads a lot of joke books. “No,” Nick says carefully. Some of Jimmy’s jokes are better than others. 

“It’s because they can’t afford new ones!” Jimmy says with a smile. 

All of the sudden someone shouts “HEY!” and Marcus almost jumps out of his skin. A security guard’s got Andrew by the back of his shirt. Even though he’s alone at first, which is a little weird because all the other security they had seen when they were hiding earlier were in pairs, his shout brings a bunch of other people running. 

An hour later Mister Saad has come to pick them all up from the security office. He keeps apologizing to the guy in charge, whose name tag reads “Mike Smith”, especially about the part where Andrew kicked him in the shins. Twice. Mostly he seems worried they’re going to arrest the Slugbug Club, which is silly, because Marcus is pretty sure you can’t arrest eight year olds. Mister Saad is promising that he’ll have a stern talk with all of them about trespassing when Snapshot goes, “Wait just a second Dad...”

Jimmy, Brandon, Nick, and Andrew all noticeably perk up, because Snapshot is going to clear their name and hopefully they won’t be grounded until they’re thirty, or put in jail. Marcus settles in for the story, because when Snapshot gets to explaining a mystery he’s pretty good. Almost as good as dinosaurs.

 **3) Cam Jansen**

“I think you would not fit into my tunic and breeches,” Page Bollig says skeptically. Jimmy resents that, because Page Bollig definitely isn’t _that_ much older. 

“He keeps outgrowing all his clothes too,” Shawzy offers. And oh. Right. Jimmy’s actually supposed to go sneaker shopping with his mom tomorrow because his toes are pushing up against the top of his shoes. 

“What clothing do you wear?” Leddy asks, pen out and notebook open. Leddy’s kinda obsessed with taking notes so they can compare the differences between the times they travel to and their own. He tried to make them all do research after they came back from their first trip, to see if it matched up with what was in the library. No one wants to help but Leddy hasn’t given up yet. 

“Clothing,” Bollig says, looking a Leddy like he’s asked what color the sky is. “Breeches and a tunic, and shoes and a hat. What I am wearing now. What everyone wears.”

“Well women wear dresses,” Saader says reasonably. Now Bollig’s looking at all of them like they’ve said the sky is blue and grass is green. Before they left Leddy said that women weren’t allowed to wear pants in the Middle Ages, so Saader isn’t _wrong_. It’s kinda weird, because Jimmy’s mom wears pants all the time, but in the past is a different place.

“I should have left you all in the moat,” Bollig finally says, but he waits to make sure they’re following before walking away. 

“You don’t know anyone named M, do you?” Shawzy asks as they squelch their way into the woods.

“Like the letter?” Bollig asks suspiciously. 

“Yeah,” Shawzy says. “It was from the treehouse.” 

“The future,” Bollig says, shaking his head, “is very, very weird.” 

**4) The Magic Tree House**

Brandon’s never heard of gamma rays. He’s actually pretty sure that Andrew is making them up. “No, no,” Andrew argues, “I saw them on the tv the other day, there was this guy, and he got hit by gamma rays, and then when he got angry he would turn big and green and destroy things.” 

“I still don’t see how the vegetables tie in,” Brandon says. Jimmy is sitting in his cage very peacefully, nibbling on a carrot stick that Marcus and his friends Brandon and Nick gave him after they came home from school. Brandon admits Jimmy’s a huge rabbit, probably bigger than Andrew. But during the day he mostly eats and sleeps. He doesn’t really look like he’s responsible for the bent wires of his cage and the random destruction of the dining room chair legs. 

Andrew’s stalking back and forth on the counter top, his tail lashing and whiskers bristling. “Don’t you understand?” he practically hisses. “The kids aren’t allowed to eat those carrots because Mom said they weren’t organic and might have been irradiated or something. They were probably irradiated with _gamma rays_.”

Brandon scratches his ear. He doesn’t mean anything by it other than it’s September and he always itches when he sheds his summer coat, but Andrew takes it as some sort of judgement. “Fine,” he says, “be that way.” He jumps down from the counter and begins to walk away but he can’t resist shouting, “Just wait until tonight!” over his shoulder as he walks into the living room. 

Brandon sighs and flops back down on his bed. So much for getting a full night’s sleep before tomorrow morning’s run with Dad. 

**5) Bunnicula**


End file.
